Monthly Archives: April 2020

I Hate Bunny Day

UPDATE: Since writing this article, a patch was released for Animal Crossing: New Horizons that turned down the spawn rate on all Bunny Day eggs. This article is representative of the six days of the event before the patch was rolled out.

Like most of the world, I’m dedicating a lot of time to the recently released Animal Crossing: New Horizons, a game which I absolutely adore. The simple pleasure of just building and maintaining my own island has been, among other things, therapeutic. That is until April 1st rolled around and every Animal Crossing: New Horizons player got pranked at the same time by a giant asshole dressed up like a bunny, making it the worst April Fools joke of all time.

If you don’t know, Animal Crossing: New Horizons introduced their first seasonal event that is some vague celebration of Easter, focusing more on the eggs and less on the whole Jesus thing. It’s supposed to be a light and happy event to shake up the routines of a standard day in Animal Crossing: New Horizons, tasking players with collecting various eggs to make Bunny Day themed furniture.

It was supposed to be cute and happy, but it very quickly went from charming to annoying and then to frustrating. So how could something designed to be so lighthearted become so despised by many Animal Crossing: New Horizons players? Well there are a few reasons.

Firstly, the entire event runs from April 1st to April 12th. That’s twelve whole days of the bullshit that I’m going to explain a little later in this article. Twelve days of having to deal with this event whether you want to participate or not. It’s maddening.

The second and possibly biggest reason has to do with one of the core mechanical changes in Animal Crossing: New Horizons, crafting. In New Horizons a focus has been put on crafting furniture and tools through the use of raw materials that you find throughout the world. Chop a tree for would, hit a rock for iron and so on and so forth. The problem is that while you could whack a tree reliably for three pieces of wood, now there’s a high chance that at least one of them will actually be an egg. How an egg was hidden inside the bark of a tree, I’ll never know.

But it isn’t just some minor inconvenience, as everything that you would do in Animal Crossing: New Horizons now has a fucking egg attached to it. Mining for iron? Egg. Chopping wood? Egg. Going fishing? Oh that wasn’t actually a fish, somehow you caught yet another fucking egg. These little bastards are everywhere, and even though you can just sell them or give them to villagers, they still waste your time and resources.

This leads to my third issue with Bunny Day. Even though I’m actively not participating, I’m still wasting my time getting bamboozled by what looks like fish in the water, but are actually sentient, swimming eggs. I’ll go to dig up what should be a fossil, and instead it’ll be a special subterranean egg. Not only does it waste my time, but it wears on my tools. My fishing rod will break because I wasted it’s good fishing energy on a stupid egg, which leads to me having to march over to a tree to get wood (and more eggs), head to a crafting table to make another fishing rod, and then head back to do this stupid cycle over again.

You can’t even escape from this shit because the being behind this holiday, Zipper, who is most definitely a man in a bunny suit and not a bunny, is a criminal. Single-handedly, this monster managed to not only pollute my oceans, ground and skies with his shitty eggs, but did it on every island I might visit. In Animal Crossing: New Horizons there’s a mechanic that allows you to fly to a procedurally generated island to mine for resources and possibly catch exotic bugs or fish. But somehow this fugitive of the law in a bunny costume, filthed up every island I might find a temporary escape in.

For those keeping score at home, this holiday was forced upon me, even if I don’t participate in it I have to suffer through its dumb mechanics, and it’s a colossal waste of time and resources that I cannot escape from and must endure. Bunny Day sucks shit and it goes on too long. I don’t want your heinous egg-themed furniture, I don’t care about any of it, I just want it to go away.

Lastly, it’s wild to me that only 11 days into Animal Crossing: New Horizons being out publicly, with people still settling into their rhythms and routines in the game, this event has basically thrown a wrench into any plans they had. I’m still actively developing my island, and when I get 7 eggs that are worth a few pennies each versus 7 fish that would fetch a far better price, I’m being actively thwarted in my attempts to make a kick-ass island.

I really love Animal Crossing: New Horizons and check in on it several times a day. It’s been the bright spot in what’s been a pretty dreary time in all of our lives, which is why it sucks even more that a stupid event that was made to be fun and happy is actively draining my enjoyment and desire to pop in from time to time. I can’t wait until this event is over and I can go back to not seeing 8 balloons with eggs in them floating around my island like a bunch of derelict satellites and space trash. Till then, fuck Bunny Day.

Walkabout in Walking Simulator

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As someone who hasn’t played nor has no intention to play Death Stranding, it’s been fascinating to experience what essentially is a gigantic parody of it. If you haven’t seen it, there’s currently a free game on Steam called Walking Simulator that’s basically one giant joke at Hideo Kojima’s expense. It’s shallow, it’s stupid, and it isn’t fun, but it made me laugh and that’s gotta count for something.

With that being said, I’d like to take you on a journey. Walk with with me through the frozen tundra of Walking Simulator.

We start with a quote, as all good video games do. This is a powerful metaphor for sure, but in Walking Simulator, it’s a little more literal.

Welcome to Antarctica. You’re first task, go deliver fuel and definitely don’t get distracted and accidentally spawn a bunch of enemies. That would be tragic.

Dang.

Not a problem though. Those fools can’t run and I totally can. Time to take my Jenga tower of boxes on a trek through this frozen wasteland.

There are two very important things to know about Walking Simulator. The first is that random packages and enemies will spawn around you if you’re moving slow enough. You’re gonna wanna pick as many of these up as possible.

The second is that I don’t think there’s a limit to how much stuff you can carry.

The people in this building are gonna be so impressed with my very good package tower.

This custodian is not impressed by my objectively good tower, nor are they phased by the cold weather at all. They should send this guy out there instead of me.

After dropping off my very important packages, not only did I get more, but I got the chance to buy energy drinks. I tried one and I’m pleased to report that they give you superhuman running powers for a limited time.

Is it cool if I take this? I’m just gonna take this.

This is so much better than running.

This bad boy is a little squirrelly on the controls front, but I can handle it.

Ah shoot.

Stuck the landing though. Pretty sweet if I do say so myself.

Yo, it’s Greg with Postmates. You want me to leave this outside or what?

Not gonna lie, this is simultaneously the coolest and lamest office I’ve ever seen.

But hey, any office where I can get a jet-pack is worth visiting, if you ask me.

Oh this mountain doesn’t stand a chance now that I have this drone strapped to my back.

He’s doing it!

Fuck.

Ouch.

Dammit. I just want to get to the top of this horrible mountain.

Hell yeah baby, it’s happening!

Good enough.

I really should have listened to this. I really, REALLY should have. It didn’t get better and they tried to warn me about it.

I’m too far in though, I need to see this stupid game through.

Really wish I could use my jet-pack while riding this snowmobile and turn myself into the worst plane that’s ever existed.

If the snowmobile controls this terribly, I can only imagine how poorly the truck I’m going to pickup is going to be.

More cargo. Love it, love it. Absolutely loving how the cargo is also definitely tied down and won’t become an issue while I’m driving nearly 4000 Walking Simulator miles.

This isn’t me being fancy with the camera. This is me spinning in circles while going 60 miles per hour in the snow.

God dammit.

Can you guys not? I’m trying to pick up the things I dropped.

I could have sworn I had two of these in the truck.

Turns out, these containers just explode. Good thing two of them are strapped to my back inside the truck.

Another flawless delivery in the books. Now to… go back to where I started? Okay…

Buddy, really? I don’t even have anything except this terrible truck. And no, even though I called it terrible, you can’t have it.

I wonder what they’re gonna have me do next.

Trucks can survive a couple of barrel rolls, right?

Oh… you just want me to do the first mission again, huh? I think I’m gonna follow the advice you gave me a while ago and just not play this thing anymore.

Walking Simulator isn’t a game of substance in any way, shape or form. It purely exists as a method to dunk on the tepidly received Death Stranding that came out last year, and by that metric, it succeeds. As someone who hasn’t played Death Stranding, I can confirm that this is exactly what it’s like.

In all honesty though, Walking Simulator is genuinely not worth your time, even at the low price of zero dollars. I’m kind of angry with myself for playing it for the hour I did, but I got a couple of laughs out of it so I guess I can’t be too upset.

If you like Death Stranding, good for you. If you don’t, that’s fine too. I’m not here to cast judgements on your gaming preferences at all. But there’s one last thing that I do want to show you that might just be the scariest and most sinister part of this whole silly game.

They’re going to put out more content for this ridiculous game.

What are the odds that this game goes from a complete parody, to a more full fledged product that people actually end up enjoying? Like, I could definitely see the joke going so far that it wraps around to being something sincere. Part of me thinks that with a little more polish and slightly more to do, Walking Simulator could be fun in a weird way. Then there’s the other part of me that hopes I never have to boot this game up ever again.

Blog: The Doctor is In – 04/01/20

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There are some games that are just evergreen and remain a part of your life well after you’re done playing them. For my generation, games like Super Mario World, The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, Earthbound, and so on and so forth, usually occupy a spot on their list. While those games are all well and good, I’d like to talk about a certain game that’s managed to weasel its way back into my life in a major way.

Since there’s no natural segue that I can think of, I’ll just go ahead and say it’s the NES version of Dr. Mario that’s infiltrated my life once more. To clarify, I’ve always liked Dr. Mario. It’s been one of my favorite puzzle games of all time, even beating out Tetris in my mind. It’s easy to understand, it’s a load of fun, and has some killer music in it. But even with all that being true, the odds of me ever playing it again were slim.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8CB1fFeb1n8

That’s where the Nintendo Entertainment Online System came into play. Maybe you’re more familiar with it as, “the virtual console on the Switch.” On this brilliantly titled application, you’ve got instant access to a bunch of classic (and not-so-classic) games of yesteryear. I’m pretty sure I booted this service up 3 or 4 times in total since signing up for Nintendo’s online service.

Now, my partner never really played video games as a child, only really getting into games with the Gamecube as their first system. They had missed out on a lot of the games that our generation grew up on, something that this service we both had for the Switch, could rectify. We booted up both the NES and SNES online systems, and poked around for a few hours. Standouts like Kirby Superstar, Super Tennis, and a few others were engaging and fun for us, but it was Dr. Mario himself that really did the trick.

Side note, there were about a hundred doctor and medicine-based puns I could of made in that last paragraph but didn’t. You’re welcome.

My partner was hooked, playing Dr. Mario for the remainder of our session, and even going home and powering through it on their own. I’d get screen shots of victory screens for passing level milestones along with some gentle gloating about their skill. It was genuinely nice to see how engaged they were with this 30 year old game I hadn’t thought about since the early nineties.

With this version of Dr. Mario being online enabled too, we would just end up playing it once or twice a week for an hour or two. These games usually pan out poorly for me, but they’re having fun and that’s all that really matters. I never would have suspected that this “doctor” would be the guy who’d help us stay connected, and without charging us thousands of dollars as is customary for the American healthcare system.